Mirrors
by Alsike
Summary: Emma Frost's first time was her decision, but it was not all a girl could wish. Perhaps this time might be different. Linked to my X-overs, but Emma-centric


The outfit was virginal, even if nothing else was. Emma stared at herself in the mirror and hated what she saw.

She had heard one of the other girls' mothers talking, drunk off her ass on martinis and schnapps. "You have to let them wear white when they're young," she had said. "By the time they drag some boy to the altar, they've put out so many times that white's stained brown, and it won't wash out."

Her friend had giggled into her cosmopolitan. "You sure you've gotten them young enough?"

She had waved the comment away magnanimously. "It doesn't count if its only grass stains on their knees."

Emma had walked past stiffly. They had watched her. "Of course _some_ girls," the mother had said. Her friend smiled tightly.

The presentation had only been a normal degree of humiliating. Adrienne had found her afterwards, _her_ dress slinky and dark, her boyfriend leaning against the wall, looking bored and oafish. Adrienne caught her jaw like she always did, looking at her face, for something. Emma didn't know what.

"Enjoy your moment in the spotlight?" She laughed mockingly. "Anything that makes you less of an outcast, baby sister."

She turned away without waiting for a response and took her boyfriend's arm. "I love these shows. They think they're so proper, when they're just a meat market, hanging those prime young pieces of flesh in the window, ready to get skewered."

Christian had found her then, giving her an honest hug. "Was I not entirely right? White is just your color."

But he was making eyes with one of the waiters in moments and disappeared. Her mother didn't make it far enough out of her haze of alcohol and drugs to even recognize her. Her father didn't come. She wasn't sorry about that.

It was cold outside, but there was still a cluster of smokers behind the shrubbery. Emma leaned against the wall and wrapped her arms around herself. (Her rent-a-date escort had disappeared after the first obligatory dance, not that she was interested in dancing more).

A girl in a white dress and a boy in a rent-a-tux stumbled out from behind the bushes. The girl was wiping her mouth and headed quickly to the bathroom to fix her make up.

"Bet she got grass stains on her dress," Emma muttered. It was repulsive. This whole event was repulsive. She turned on her heel and started towards the gate. She'd walk home rather than stay here.

When she stepped out of the gate, she felt a hand grab her shoulder and she stiffened. It was Adrienne's boyfriend, liquor thick on his breath. She froze and he rubbed his body sloppily against her.

"Your sister's being a fucking tease," he said, his words rolling and clicking oddly. "It's not fair. Frost girls are supposed to put out. You put out, right? _Emma_."

She knew what he wanted. She could see it as clearly as if he were putting on a demonstration. He wanted what they all wanted, a flash of color and light and heat, pounding, slime, grunting. The tightness in his crotch pushed against her. (Ian had wanted the same thing, but Ian had wanted _her_, or at least had fantasized about fucking her. She was beginning to learn to tell the difference.)

Everyone already thought she was a whore. (She'd kissed one man, because she'd thought he wanted her to, not because she wanted to. She didn't understand about wanting to. It didn't mean anything to her.)

"Yeah, I put out," she said, turning into him.

He took her against the wall, her skirt hiked up over her waist. He was too drunk to keep it hard for long, but it was long enough to make her bleed. She wasn't fucking getting on her knees.

He slipped slackly and moistly down the inside of her thigh and she shoved him away. She straightened out her dress and walked home.

She looked the same as she always had. Her dress was fine. One of her elbows was scraped, but her make-up hadn't even been touched.

(She hurt inside, but she always hurt inside. This time at least it was physical.)

Who gave a damn what that girl's mother said? She'd wear white if she wanted to. If the stain didn't come out, you just bought something new.

* * *

"You know, white might not be the best color to wear to a kindergarten picnic," Emily suggested. It wasn't a fight she expected to win, but she was building up ammunition for the subsequent 'I told you so.'

Emma frowned. "I'm not afraid of stains."

"No, you just whine about them endlessly." Emily sidled up to her and hung over her shoulder. "Don't frown like that. You look just like Didi."

Emma glanced back toward the mirror. She pulled Emily into her, wrapping her arms firmly around her waist. Emily rested against her shoulder and looped her arms around her neck.

This time, when Emma looked at herself in the mirror, she didn't hate what she saw.


End file.
